I was twelve years old when my parents dropped me off at St Andrews School, Turi (Kenya), still considered amongst the finest schools of East Africa. I was bright-eyed and ready to live my Enid Blyton-inspired boarding school dreams. Built in the highlands of the Rift Valley in Kenya, there was so much to love about the 250-acre campus. If I look back and try and find the root of many aspects to my personality, including courage, resilience and empathy, it began at Turi. My education is something I will treasure for as long as I live and it is what motivates me to work in education every day, the hope that someday the current generation of students look back and say that the school that they were educated at…made them who they are.

On finishing school, I moved back to India and pursued my undergraduate studies at Christ University in Bangalore. On graduating, I moved to the University of Edinburgh to pursue both of my Masters degrees, one in Literature and Modernity, the other in International Development. These experiences added to who I am today — the incredible opportunity to study at such an outstanding institution and the people who I met along the way helped me grow.

After completing my higher studies, I moved back home, to Kenya, and began looking for a job. Very much a rudderless ship! Part-time work took me back to Turi and it reminded me of the values that I continue to hold so dear in my life. In a sense, I felt anchored again.

When I found out that I had landed my dream job with the United Nations Development Programme, I ran down the same corridor I used to run as a little girl when my matron would share with me that my parents were visiting, but this time as an adult. I remember vividly hugging my mother. It was an affirmation of the fact that all their support and belief in me had amounted to something. Not once did my parents question my choice of course to study, they believed in studying for a sense of personal fulfillment, without a job in mind and for that I am eternally grateful to them.

When I arrived for my first day at work, like any aspiring young professional, heading off to her first day at work I had tried on ten different outfits and the clothes strewn around my newly rented apartment in Nairobi bore testament to that!

I was going to be working for the Judges and Magistrates Vetting Board, an independent body set up to vet the entire judiciary following the elections of 2007-2008. I was put in an office as I waited for the Chairman of the Board to meet me and in walked in an elderly man with a fedora matched with trousers and a shirt with what could only be described as a Hawaiian print. Little did I know the long sleeves of the shirt concealed a limb lost in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. He looked at me and said ‘and you are?’, I nervously introduced myself and he smiled and said ‘I’m Albie’. By the time we were done with our twenty-minute conversation, Albie decided I would not work for the Chairman of the Board but instead I would work for him, one of the foreign judges appointed to the Board.

That night I went home and read about him and understood the true magnitude of who he was. He fought against Apartheid and helped write the Constitution of South Africa and he survived an assassination attempt on his life in Maputo. What followed was seven months of working tirelessly with Albie; he instilled my work ethic through leading by example. My husband gets frustrated with what a stickler I am in my professional life! But if I look for a root cause, it’s Albie Sachs. He taught me that education was not just what was learnt in a classroom but more importantly what you could learn from the people around you.

Fast forward four years and I found myself in India, having lived in Kenya, Tanzania and the UAE;when my mother encouraged me to work at Woodstock School in the tiny hill station of Mussoorie. Initially, I wasn’t sure about moving there but what followed were the four most wonderful years of my life. I had a job I loved, I met my husband Arjun there, he proposed to me in our garden and we got married on the tiny hill station, finally and perhaps most importantly my daughter was born there too. It was also where I first began working with children and had 92 students who we looked after, as head of a pastoral care group. These students were my first introduction to what it felt like to be a parent and what that actually required from us — care, responsibility and so much more. 

When early in 2021 we decided to move on from Woodstock School and work in Hyderabad at the Aga Khan Academy, we really didn’t know what to expect. If I were to think of a mentor, after Albie, it would be Dr. Jonathan Long. I worked for Dr Long at Woodstock and when he moved to take up the position of Head of Academy and help build a world-class school in Hyderabad, my husband and I followed. What we did know is that the vision of His Highness, The Aga Khan, aligned with what we believed in and we wanted to continue to impact the lives of young people. Having Dr Long lead the way was crucial and instrumental in us moving across the country, with our 8-month-old baby and rescue dog!

The last year has been incredibly fulfilling both personally and professionally. Working in Communications is not easy and balancing that with a pandemic and toddler doesn’t help but what I have enjoyed most is feeling empowered to work each day. The fact that I am surrounded by people who understand what it means to create a fine balance in your life and, as a result, support the idea. 

When my daughter was born, I had a number of people ask me how I would manage being a mother and continue to contribute to a very demanding job? It was an archaic way of thinking that frustrated me greatly in the early phases. I was sure that I wanted my daughter to grow up and chase her dreams, to know that it was possible to balance a successful career while being a mother. To understand that in our family, the women are a tribe, my cousin described it best during her speech at our wedding where she said, ‘We may fight with each other but try fighting with one of us and you will have all of us to deal with’. I hope one day when my daughter realises her dreams and decides to set sail into a world, she will make her own, that my husband and I can be the wind in her sails.